The Barbed Rose

He moved his hands from his eyes, marveling at the silence when no chains rattled, and focused his bleary vision on the bands gleaming softly atop the inlaid wood. Taking up the smallest, the band meant for Kallista, Joh struggled to the edge of the chair and fell off it, onto his knees.

The sudden motion had the other men startling, touching hands to blades, but nothing more. Kallista shifted, as if she meant to rise, to meet him.

“No.” Joh shook his head, crossing the small space between them on his knees. “I come to you. I may wear pentivas chains, but I come to swear my own vows.”

He slid the band over the hand she held out to him, adding it to the other four bangles on her left wrist. “I come pledging myself to you. Heart to heart, my body for yours, in whatever comes our way. We, above all others, joined as one before the One who holds all that is, was and will be. So I swear with all that is in me.”

The tears were back. This time he let them go, for wonder of wonders, there were tears on Kallista’s face as well. She bent and touched her lips to his before wiping her tears away with a little self-conscious laugh.

One at a time, Joh took up the ankle bands and repeated the oath, first to Torchay, then Obed. And it was done. The first step was taken. Pray the One the next steps got easier.

Aisse lay on her pallet in the gloom of the cave, pretending to sleep while she waited for the warriors to return. Two babies slept tucked against their sedil still inside her who never seemed to sleep and even now thumped and turned. Aisse could feel Merinda watching her.

The healer was worried, she knew. It had to have been alarming to see Aisse come awake screaming, caught in an apparent fit. But the woman wouldn’t leave her alone, endlessly pick, pick, picking, wanting to know what had happened, how she felt, was the baby moving? As if she couldn’t see it moving in great waves and bulges.

Aisse sighed. Merinda went silent and still in her corner, forcing Aisse to pretend at dreaming, smacking her lips, mumbling wordlessly. Merinda would drive her mad. She might be ilias—of a sort—but she wasn’t marked. She didn’t know what the magic could do, hadn’t been caught up in it when it swept through them. Aisse hadn’t known herself it could reach so far.

Perhaps it was petty, but Aisse didn’t want Merinda to know. The magic was hers. Hers and the men’s. Merinda didn’t have any part of it, nor did she need to. Not unless Kallista said, and Kallista wasn’t here. Merinda could do sex with the men if she wanted. Aisse didn’t care about that. But the magic was theirs alone.

“The mighty hunters return.” Stone burst through the low cave entrance. “We come, bearing success before us.”

“Actually, we come dragging a goat behind us,” Fox amended, ducking inside. “And if Stone hadn’t shouted loud enough to be heard back in Tibre, we’d have a deer as well. If he could have shot straight enough to kill it.”

Hiding her smile, Aisse heaved herself more or less upright, patting the babies back to sleep when they stirred. Fox hauled on the rope he held, and true enough, a small goat came baa-ing into the cave. Its hooves scrabbled against the stone floor as it fought to free itself of the tether.

“It came running up to us,” Fox said. “I think it wanted to be milked. Something must have happened to her kid. But it doesn’t seem to like ropes.” The goat kicked at him and he dodged the blow.

“It heard me shouting and came.” Stone winked at Aisse as he sat beside her near the fire. “Thought I was calling it. See there? If I hadn’t shouted, we wouldn’t have the goat and since we were hunting food for the babies, a she-goat is better than a deer any day. I’m frozen.”

“Why were you shouting?” Merinda brought him dry trousers from the packs across the fire.

Stone surprised Aisse by looking her way rather than Merinda’s, question in his eyes. She gave him a subtle shake of her head and he answered with an equally subtle nod. He took the trousers and stood to change, delaying his response further.

“I fell,” he said. “Tripped over something under the snow, slid down a bank and laid out full length.” He displayed his ice-crusted frontside before stripping off the wet garments. “It was cold.”

“Come and change, Fox,” Merinda called. “You need to warm up, too.”

“I didn’t fall. I’m not as wet as Stone. Let me see to the animals.” He paused, apparently observing the goat with his other sense. “Does anyone know how to milk a goat, or is this another thing we have to discover how to do?”

Merinda sighed. “I can do it. You come dry off. Warm up.” Her green robe swished against her wool-clad legs as she strode across the cave to the side reserved for the animals—riding horses, pack horses and now the goat.

Fox waited for her. “Thank you, Merinda.” He set his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead, both cheeks, then her lips, brief and almost—but not quite—chaste. He left the healer staring after him in bemusement for a moment before she turned slowly toward the goat. It baa-ed at her.

“What was that?” Stone asked when Fox reached them.

“You said she wants sex. If we give her that—as much as we can right now, more later—maybe she will not ask questions. She doesn’t need to know about the magic.”

“Yes, exactly” Aisse agreed. “What happened?”

“You were there.” Stone pulled his dry tunic down over his stomach and turned his back to the fire, rubbing warmth into his buttocks. “You know what happened. The magic—”

“Yes, but how? Why?” Aisse picked up Fox’s discarded trousers. “These need washing, don’t they?”

“And mine as well.” Stone grinned cheerfully at her.

“Someone I didn’t know was there, in the magic,” Fox said, dressing again quickly. “Did you sense—him, I think. A man. Another ilias? Another marked one?”

“I think you are right.” Aisse frowned. “He seemed familiar. As if I’ve met him.”

Fox shook his head. “I didn’t know him.”

“I think I did,” Stone said. “Maybe someone we met in Arikon? Before Fox found us.”

“Maybe.” Fox gathered up the wet clothing. “At least we know they reached Arikon safely.”

“What are you three discussing so seriously?” Merinda’s voice, coming so unexpectedly from so close at hand, made Aisse jump and jostle the twins. Fortunately, only Rozite protested. Stone scooped his daughter up for comfort.

“When the weather might clear enough to go on,” Fox said. “We need to reach Sumald sooner rather than later.”

He tossed the clothes he held into the pile of soiled baby things and slung an arm over Merinda’s shoulder. He took the bucket of milk from her and set it near the fire. “I can think of more interesting matters to discuss between us.” He led her away toward the shadows at the back of the cave. After a moment, Merinda’s giggle came floating out.

Aisse allowed herself a fleeting smile before turning her mind to the question of how exactly she might maneuver her frigate-sized self around to reach the milk bucket and prepare feeding bottles for the twins.

“Take Rozite,” Stone said. “I’ll make the feeders.” He tipped his head toward the shadows that made such interesting rustling noises, eyes asking questions. “You don’t mind? I thought—”

“Why would I mind? It’s sex, not magic. And she’s ilias…I think.” Aisse frowned then. “Isn’t she? If she is not, I will kill her. When I can get off the floor by myself.”

“We talked about it, Fox and I. We decided she is.”

“You just want to do sex with her.”

Stone leered happily at her. “Of course. I’d rather do it with you, mind, but she’ll do in a pinch.”

“Me? I’m fat. A pig is smaller than I am.”

“But you’re our fat pig.” Stone caught her around the middle and rolled her onto his lap, babies and all, nuzzling her neck under her short-cropped hair.

Aisse squealed, sounding far too piglike for her own comfort, and slapped at him, one-handed, clutching a squalling Rozite in the other arm. Stone just laughed and changed his nuzzling to loud, smacking kisses before he let her go. He handed her the feeder.

“I wish you would have me, Aisse,” he said, voice suddenly low and far too serious. “There’s only you and Kallista, and Kallista’s not here. I miss the belonging.”

Aisse stared at him as he prepared the second feeder against Lorynda’s waking, as Rozite sucked eagerly at the warm goat’s milk. She would never have thought it mattered to him other than the quick, pleasurable release of sex. She kept thinking of him as a Tibran Warrior, one of those who saw women as things, conveniences, rather than persons, one of those who had made her previous life a misery. But he wasn’t. Hadn’t been for more than a year. He was Adaran ilias. As was she.

And he was hers. Like Fox. And Torchay and Obed and Kallista, off away in Arikon. And Merinda too, maybe, for a time. Fox had never hurt her, had given her pleasure and a child. None of the others would hurt her either, because she was theirs. They belonged, all of them together. And if any of them wanted to do sex with her, well then…Aisse wanted it, too. She should have understood this long ago, but at least she understood it now.

“Stone.” She touched his shoulder. “I will have you, if you truly wish it. But—don’t forget to keep Merinda busy.”

He turned, leaned toward her, holding her gaze with those blue eyes that seemed so strange in such a Tibran face. He watched her, coming closer until his lips touched hers, softly at first, then with more and more intensity until he broke off and backed away.

“You do mean it,” he said, controlling his breath with effort. “I was afraid you were just—”

Then he grinned. “Good. After our little adventure in the snow, I can wait. But I have your promise.”

Aisse couldn’t help smiling in the face of that grin. “You have it.”

What was left of the day in Arikon was spent in finding clothing for Joh, resting, eating again and more resting. Now and again, Kallista touched the links inside her with delicate fingers, the magic quiescent. She wanted to test it, to see whether it had truly returned, but after such a display, the magic seemed sluggish.

Tired, perhaps. Goddess knew, Kallista was tired. And without Fox to give the magic his order, she was a bit afraid to tap into the massive power Torchay held. Who knew what that much magic would do if it got away from her?

In the middle of her seventh yawn in as many ticks, Torchay spoke. “Why are we sitting here yawning when there are beds for sleeping just behind those doors?”

The long central parlor was lined on either side with enough small bedrooms for every member of the largest ilian, a full twelve-strong, to find privacy, and one large bedroom in case they found privacy overrated. Last year, at the ilian’s beginning, they had all slept in the separate rooms. Kallista wasn’t having any of it now.

She rolled to her feet and caught Obed’s arm before he could escape on some pretext. “Go.” She shoved him ahead of her, toward the large sleeping room. “In there.”

“I need to—”

“No, you don’t. Whatever it is can wait.” She kept her grip on him, steering him where she wanted him to go. “Joh, you’d better catch up if you don’t want a nasty surprise.”

A quick jingle of silver chain behind her told her their new ilias had heeded her warning. The parlor darkened. Torchay snuffed the lamps save for the one he brought with him when he took over the lead.

The single lamp cast the big room into romantic shadows and made the enormous bed look even larger, as if it stretched past the darkness into eternity. Ivory velvet covered the vast expanse, promising a sensory treat even without the masses of gold, white and yellow silken pillows piled upon it.

“I—” Joh had to stop and clear his throat before beginning again. “I think I should sleep here.” He indicated a cot near the door, intended for children or perhaps a servant.

Kallista exchanged a look with Torchay. Aisse had slept apart for several months until she became accustomed to being part of an ilian, one full of men. Due to her past, she had trouble trusting men. Still did, save for her iliasti. Kallista supposed they owed Joh the same opportunity. It would give Joh and Torchay both a chance to get used to the new situation.

And it would occupy the cot so Obed couldn’t sleep there. If she forced a physical closeness, refused to let him retreat, perhaps he would eventually open up and allow a more complete intimacy. She feared for the magic if Obed kept himself so shut off from her, not to mention the heartache it caused. Why did he have to wait until she had come to love him before pulling back this way?

When she nodded, Joh sat on the cot and unwrapped one of the chains looped around his ankle bands. Kallista watched, intrigued. She hadn’t known the extra chains were more than decorative. Joh threaded the chain through a painted metal eyebolt near the door and snapped it shut with the click of a lock.

“I hope we have the key.” She raised an eyebrow at Torchay before looking back at Joh who was now pulling off his tunic. “Those chains are more than a century old.”

Torchay hung his tunic on a hook by the bed. “It’s on my dress uniform belt. I forgot it when you returned the chains to the Reinine last fall.”

“Did you bring your dress uniform?” Kallista drew back the velvet coverlet, exposing silken sheets.

“We were coming to court. Of course I brought it. You brought yours, too.”

Obed was standing motionless where she’d pushed him, his face shut down, eyes unfocused, seeming to stare inward. Kallista dragged his Southron robe from his shoulders, startling him to awareness.

“Get ready for bed.” She held on to the robe when he would have shrugged it back on. “You’re sleeping here. With us.”

With great dignity, he inclined his head, expression mask-like. “As you wish.”

Kallista sighed, stripping down to her chemise and smalls while Obed slowly removed his weapons, then his tunic and boots. He eyed Torchay who waited bare-chested, wearing only his knee-length smallclothes. With a subtle sigh, Obed unlaced his trousers and slid them off, though he left his undershirt on. Kallista said nothing. He was Southron, after all. Likely he felt the cold more. Torchay blew out the lamp.

With a hand in the warm center between his shoulders, Kallista pushed Obed onto the bed and followed. He gave her his back. She didn’t care, tucking herself around him as Torchay curled himself around her back. Pale moonlight glimmered faintly through the far windows, but Kallista was too tired to admire it. She slept.

As the moon rose higher and night deepened, Kallista’s sleep grew restless. She twisted between her men while dreams battered at thick walls, trying to wake the magic within. It stirred, then tucked itself tight against disturbance.

The dreams circled, probing, teasing. The magic swirled, uneasy, but held the dreams at bay until they found a gap. A tiny chink in the wall, singing with power. The dreams bled through and followed the power, carrying their message along.

Torchay stood in the Veryas Valley before Arikon. Without having to look, he knew his family was behind him—Kallista, their children, Aisse and the others. And danger lay before him.

Why he stood alone, he did not know, but he knew that he alone stood between his loved ones and unspeakable horror.

His twin Heldring-forged short swords were in his hands without having to draw them. They would do no good against the thing that was coming, but he had no other weapons. He had no magic of his own.

He waited, praying with every breath as the darkness rolled toward him. It had no shape, no substance he could distinguish with any of his senses, but he knew it was there, coming inside the darkness. He’d seen it before, known it before, but this was different. Worse. In one small corner of his mind, he wondered if this was what Fox’s knowing was like. Mostly, he waited. And prayed.

Then it was there, filled with hate and an evil so ancient it could almost be touched. Be smelled. Rot and blood and old burning metals, foulness so complete Torchay fought against retching in his sleep.

He slept. This was a dream. It wasn’t real. He could cast the dream aside, turn it from this horror.

But the thing would not go. It slithered past, laughing at his feeble defense, reaching for the helpless ones sleeping behind him. He shouted, lunging at it. The thing did not seem to like his taste, so Torchay ran at it again, and this time, it struck back.

Pain pierced his soul, like knives in his gut but worse. Torchay screamed, falling to the ground, scrabbling on his back in the dirt as the foulness raked through him. He knew this pain, had felt it before, but—Goddess, it hurt.

“Kallista, wake up!” he shouted. He could not do this alone. “Wake up, all of you! Wake up!”

“Torchay.” Strong soft arms around him, quiet voice in his ear. “Torchay, I’m awake. It’s all right.”

It wasn’t, but he was awake now, too, sweating and gasping in Kallista’s arms like he’d just fought off a thousand demons.

“Oh Goddess,” he groaned. “Demons.”

Now he knew where he had felt this pain before—last year, when the demon Tchyrizel had got its insubstantial claws in him, in the Tibran capital, before Kallista destroyed it.

“It was just a dream.” Kallista tried to pull him in, cradle his head against her, but he refused the comfort.

“Not a dream. Or not just a dream.” He shoved his hair out of his face with both hands, wishing he could shove the dream out of his head the same way.

“What do you mean?” Obed was awake, too. Of course.

They were all awake after Torchay’s shouting—probably awake clear to Winterhold. His throat burned from it.

“I’m the one with dreams that aren’t just dreams,” Kallista protested.

“But you’re asleep. Your magic is asleep. I dreamed that.”

“What did you dream? Tell me.”

He wanted to tell her, but speaking the horror aloud would somehow make it real, would bring it into this room that was—or should be—their refuge. “Not here,” he said. “Out there. In the parlor.”

“Torchay—” Kallista began another protest, but he was already moving, heading for the room where he’d left his saddle bags and the key to Joh’s chains. It was a nuisance, having to deal with another new-marked man.

He gathered all the bags from the separate rooms, keeping his mind busy with trivial matters so he wouldn’t think about things he would rather avoid. The key was quickly found and Joh unlocked from his cot cell. Then they all gathered in the parlor, shivering in their sleeping wear.

When they were situated to Kallista’s satisfaction, huddled together for warmth against the spring’s night chill—even Joh—she demanded the dream. Word by word, she pulled it from him, insisting on every detail, every nuance.

Finally, he had no more to give, and she sat back, frowning.

“I don’t like this.” Her fingers tracing lightly across Torchay’s shoulder made him shiver, but he knew her attention was elsewhere.

“Nor I,” Obed said.

“You think I do?” Torchay scowled across Kallista at his dark ilias. The man had used up nearly all the patience Torchay possessed, by the hurt he gave Kallista. And with the former lieutenant added to the mix, the strain would only get worse.

“You truly think this a dream of omen?” Obed shifted, as if to pull away.

Torchay clamped a hand on his wrist, holding him in place on Kallista’s other side. “I do.”

“So do I.” Kallista’s hand moved from Torchay’s shoulder to his bare knee. “And for you to be dreaming my dreams means that things are not right.”

“But your magic woke,” Joh said. “We all felt it.”

“It woke, yes, but…”

Torchay felt the faintest shiver of magic across his skin. Even before he’d been marked, he’d been able to tell when Kallista used magic, but this was different. Better. The magic quivered again and faded away.

“It’s sluggish,” she said. “Maybe because our ilian is separated. Maybe for other reasons. I don’t know. I can’t get it to rise. Not like it should.”

“What—” Joh fell silent without finishing. He obviously still considered himself a prisoner. And since Torchay considered him one as well, that was good.

“Ask, Joh.” Kallista leaned forward to see him past Torchay.

“What does it mean?”

“Demons,” Torchay said. “Felt like demons. Smelled like demons.”

“I think so,” Kallista agreed. “I wish I had dreamed it.”

“So do I.” Torchay shuddered. “I want no more of them.”

Kallista sifted through the dream details Torchay had given her, hunting meaning. Huddled between the warm bodies of her iliasti, she felt cold, a cold that she feared no amount of warm bodies could chase away. “The demon threatens Arikon,” she said. “It’s here in Adara, not across the sea.”

“It threatens us.” Torchay stilled her hand on his knee, pressing it flat beneath his hand. “It wasn’t some mass of humanity I was defending. It was you. It was the twins. And we need your magic to stop it.”

“You think I don’t know that?” She would have thrown herself to her feet to pace save for Torchay’s arms holding her back, Obed’s arms joining them. “I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to bring it back. Belandra doesn’t know. Nobody knows.”

“Easy now, love.” Torchay kissed her forehead, offering comfort. “We’re in Arikon. Perhaps there’s something in the archives.”

“You don’t think Serysta Reinine has had scholars scouring the shelves since the girls were born?”

“We can ask. We’ll find a way. Somehow. It will happen. Your magic will return.”

Kallista nestled her cheek against Torchay’s chest, enjoying the feel of skin against skin, and sensed more than felt Obed’s withdrawal. Physically, he was present. Emotionally and otherwise—Kallista sighed.

“I can sense all of you through the links,” she said. “Before today, I couldn’t. It’s improved that much, at least.”

“Aye.” Torchay stood, lifting Kallista in his arms. “But now, you need to sleep. We all do.”

“Without any more dreams.” She meant to catch Obed’s arm, to bring him with them, intended to, but didn’t. He followed anyway as Torchay bore her back into the sleeping room. Maybe her plan was working.

Kallista sorted out the strand that hummed of Obed, barely tasting his faint exotic scent that faded as she sought it. As if he pulled away even here. Maybe the plan stunk.

They had bigger things to think of than a moody, bad-tempered ilias, but Kallista couldn’t help feeling in the bottom of her gut that—despite the demons—this was important. As sleep came to claim her, she wondered whether it might be important because of the demons.

Kallista woke to the touch of kisses along her collarbone above her chemise, to the caress of silk-soft hair trailing over her breasts. She opened her eyes to the sunlit scarlet of Torchay’s hair as he kissed his way up her throat to her mouth.

“Good morn, sweet ilias.” His lips spoke against hers before opening in a deep, drugging kiss.

She felt half-asleep, lost in a sensual dream as Torchay brought her body awake with the stroking of his rough-callused hands. She’d missed this, missed him these last few months.

“Good morn to you.” She returned the greeting as his mouth left hers to follow the path his hands had taken. “No more dreams?”

He shook his head, not bothering to disturb his focus on lips against skin as he shoved her chemise up out of his way. Kallista’s whole being concentrated on the same path, but even so, she noticed the bed felt empty. “Obed?”

“Awake. Gone.” Torchay licked his tongue down the slope of her breast and across her nipple, bringing her up in an involuntary arc. He smiled against her skin and made her gasp.

“Joh?” She could say that much.

“Asleep.” He made her gasp again as his fingers slid between her legs into the wet, slick heat there.

“You sure?”

Torchay lifted his head, met her gaze. “Do you care?”